Posts Tagged ‘five’

Border soldiers found a second body, that of Ho Van Chay on Saturday in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue. He was one of the five fishermen missing at sea, after huge waves swallowed their boat in waters off Lang Co town, three days ago.

On December 17, the body of Tran Chuong had been recovered while authorities were able to save 34 year old Nguyen Quan.

The accident was caused by giant waves and fierce winds lashing the area as a northerly cold front has affected the country for the last few days. The boat was on its way to Chan May Port when it was overwhelmed by the ferocious waves.

The local army personnel and authorities have mobilized 35 soldiers to continue search for the remaining two fishermen.

Phu Loc District has assisted each of the five fishermen’s families with VND3 million.

In the northern province of Hai Phong, 23 members on board the Phu Tan Vessel have gone missing for three days and have as yet not been found. Rescue forces are continuing the search operations.

More mechanisms should be created to help Vietnam’s 5 million disabled people access job training to make sure they fully benefit from the new Law on People with Disabilities.

Disabled people make up 6.34 percent of Vietnam’s population.

The Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs has asked ministries, organisations and individuals to make contributions to the draft decree, which is used to fine tune the law.

Nguyen Xuan Lap, deputy director of the ministry’s General Department of Social Protection, said those drafting the decree would clarify support policies for the disabled and enterprises that employ them.

According to the ministry, about 2.5 percent of the disabled has access to job training classes, but only 16,000 have permanent jobs.

Dang Van Thanh, vice-chairman of the Vietnam Association of Business and Enterprises for Persons with Disabilities, said the decree should refer to particular support available during training courses.

He said it should also raise the monthly support for disabled apprentices, which has remained at 540,000 VND since 2005.

Thanh said it is also necessary to create clear procedures to enable enterprises that employ handicapped people or are owned by handicapped people to access preferential loans and learn how to reduce tax or make themselves tax exempt.

According to Government decree ND81/CP passed in 1995, the number of disabled employees in larger enterprise should amount to 2-3 percent of total employees. If not, they are compelled to pay money to fund to create jobs for the disabled run by the local Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs departments. However, at present, the fund is accessible in only about 10 cities and provinces.

Thanh said measures are needed to speed up the establishment and operation of the fund throughout the whole country.

“The most important thing now is enforcement of the new law,” said Nguyen Thao Van, human resources manager of the Hanoi-based Nghi Luc Song Training Centre. She herself is also disabled.

Van said that although the State regulates support for the disabled during their apprenticeships, most apprentices receive no support, so they and their families have to manage by themselves.

She also recommended opening more training classes for the disabled. “The graduation certificates, granted at secondary school, do help them access better jobs besides the occupation certificate they earn at the centre,” Van said.

Since 2008, the centre has trained about 700 disabled people about computing and English, 30 percent of them found jobs with monthly payment of 3-4 million VND (150-200 USD).

She said this proves the effectiveness of the centre’s training model as well as the disabled’s ability to meet higher work requirements and not just be hired to do manual work, such as handicrafts.

The draft decree consists of four chapters covering regulations on the types of disabilities, levels of disabilities – and support in education, work and social welfare.

The draft proposes increasing monthly support for handicapped children and elders unable to look after themselves from 180,000 VND to 450,000 VND (10-23 USD). Those who take care of them will be given 270,000 VND (13 USD).

The Law on People with Disabilities was approved in June and will take effect next year. It replaces another law framed in 1998.

AFP – A mother and her son wait for anti-tuberculosis pills at a clinic on October 13, 2010 in Alexandra township

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – Ten million people will die of tuberculosis in the next five years if global funding to fight the disease is not increased, the Stop TB Partnership warned.

The Partnership, a coalition of governments, non-profits, companies and international organisations, said 47 billion dollars (34 billion euros) are needed to save five million lives between now and 2015, including two million women and children.

“We need a plan to stop these completely unnecessary deaths,” said Rifat Atun, chair of the Partnership’s coordinating board, at the launch of the coalition’s 2011-2015 “Global Plan to Stop TB”.

“If we are able to carry out this plan, we will treat 32 million people and save five million lives,” Atun said.

Each year, nine million people contract TB, which hits hardest in the developing world. Most cases occur in Asia (55 percent) and Africa (30 percent), with India and China alone accounting for 35 percent of all cases, the Partnership said.

Close to two million people die of the contagious lung infection each year — most from treatable cases, it said.

“Tuberculosis is an ancient disease. It should have been eliminated by today,” said Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organisation’s Stop TB department.

“The pandemic is slowly declining, but far too slowly.”

The Partnership called for renewed efforts to help the most vulnerable patients — the more than one million HIV positive people who contract TB each year and the 400,000 to 500,000 people who develop multi-drug resistant TB.

Half a million HIV positive people die from TB each year, a quarter of all AIDS deaths, said Paul de Lay, deputy executive director of UNAids.

“There is a terrible link between HIV and TB,” he said.

The coalition said 10 billion dollars are needed to fund research to develop a vaccine, new medications and faster and more effective testing. It said its goal by 2015 is to have three new drug regimens and four vaccines in Phase III clinical trials, the final step before drugs go to market.

It said funding to fight the disease has lagged in the past five years, adding that it needs to make up a funding shortfall of nine billion dollars from the last five-year cycle amid limited private-sector interest in the disease.

“Pharmaceutical companies don’t invest enough in TB because it’s not a profitable market,” said Christian Lienhardt, senior research advisor for the Partnership.

“It’s a poor people’s disease, so TB medication will never be a blockbuster.”

The Partnership said affected countries would not be able to fully fund the fight against TB, and called on international donors in high-income countries to kick in 2.8 billion dollars a year over the next five years to make up the funding gap.

Tuberculosis is a contagious bacterial infection that spreads by air. An infected person can spread the disease to about 15 other people per year.

At least five illicit gold miners have been found dead after being buried in a mountain landslide, prompted by heavy rains, in the northwestern province of Lao Cai August 5.

According to the Van Ban District People’s Committee, after a few days of torrential rains, thousands of tons of mountain soil and stone fell down on Sa Phin gold mine in Nam Xay Commune. About five to six miners were buried while they were taking shelter from the rain in a tent.

Five dead bodies of the men have been found, while local residents and authorities said that it was impossible to determine the number of people buried under the soil.

Earlier, on July 29 and August 3, two people were also reported to have been killed by flashfloods and landslides in the area.

Fidel Castro accused U.S. authorities of torturing a convicted Cuban spy, telling a meeting of communist youths that the agent had been placed in solitary confinement in California.

At the meeting was former castaway Elian Gonzalez, now 16, who could be seen listening intently to the ex-Cuban president when footage of the closed-door session aired on state-run television Friday night.

Castro, who turns 84 on Aug. 13, is suddenly making near daily appearances in and around Havana, after spending four years almost completely out of the public eye following emergency intestinal surgery that forced him to cede power to his younger brother Raul.

In this photo released by the state media Cubadebate web site, Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro, right, shakes hands with Yailin Orta Rivera, Juventud Rebelde journalist and professor at the Communications College at the University of Havana, during a meeting with youth at the Havana Convention Center in Havana, Cuba, Friday July 30, 2010.

He has occasionally turned up in green fatigues similar to the military uniform that had been his trademark during nearly half a century in power. This time, however, Castro wore a red-checkered shirt and gray pants while speaking for a bit more than an hour in Havana’s convention center.

Looking relaxed and engaged, Castro spoke about the case of Gerardo Hernandez, who is serving a double life sentence on counts of conspiracy to murder four Miami-based pilots who were slain by Cuban jets in 1996 when they were dispersing pro-democracy pamphlets on the island.

Hernandez is one of the so-called “Cuban Five” intelligence agents that Cuba says it sent to the U.S. to infiltrate anti-Castro groups linked to 1990s hotel bombings and other terrorists attacks on Cuban soil. The five were convicted in the U.S. of spying.

Castro said Hernandez has been placed in solitary confinement at a prison in Victorville, California.

“Did he do anything? No, nothing,” he said. “Four FBI officials met to decide and they decided. That’s torture. There’s nothing else to call it, it’s torture, and its occurring in view of the whole world.”

Castro also said Hernandez was in need of medical treatment he was not receiving.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Interests Section in Havana — which Washington maintains instead of an embassy — referred questions about the case to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which said it was up to authorities at the Victorville facility to comment. Two calls to representatives at the prison went unanswered Friday.

Complaints that Hernandez had been placed in solitary confinement have been made throughout the week by Ricardo Alarcon, speaker of the Cuban parliament, which convenes Sunday for one of its two full sessions a year.

“It was very emotional to again see the commander. I missed seeing him and it makes me very happy,” said Gonzalez, who was the center of a nasty international custody battle a decade ago and was frequently visited by Castro after he returned to Cuba.

When asked if he had any advice for Cuban youth, Castro said, “we can’t focus on the future with the concepts and images of the past.”

“Everything is new,” he said, “you have to let your imagination soar.”

But Castro repeated a warning of coming nuclear war, which he has claimed for weeks will pit the U.S. and Israel against Iran, and be worsened by tensions between North and South Korea.

The capital city will not carry out a planned project to build five welcome gates for the upcoming Thang Long-Hanoi millennial celebrations, announced the Chairman of Hanoi People’s Committee Nguyen The Thao at the 21st session of the Hanoi municipal People’s Council on July 15.

A design of welcome gate

Instead Hanoi will be decorated with ornamental flowers, trees and posters. Money collected from businesses to build the welcome gates will be used for resolving pressing social issues and to renovate urban areas, he added.

The city previously planned to revoke over 14,000 square meters of land to build five welcome gates, at a total capital of around VND50 billion (US2.5 million) on roads including Phap Van-Cau Gie, Bac Thang Long, National Road No.5, the National Highway No. 1A and Lang-Hoa Lac.

The city received many opinions from scientists, experts, architects and the public. Most of opinions said that it is waste of money to build unnecessary entrances. The authorities should use VND50 billion to support the poor and resolve social problems.

Furthermore, the Vietnam and Hanoi Architects’ Associations together with many experts did not agree over the design of the proposed welcome gates.

The mayor also pledged that the implementation of decoration works for the grand celebration would be finished before August 15.